After more than 39(!) years of work as a Christian in higher education, I am using this blog to share my thoughts on teaching and learning in undergraduate education, related and unrelated to orthodox Christian faith. Please peruse the archives for a wide variety of topics.
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Friday, January 22, 2016

Diversity in higher education is not an issue of an enhanced education for the
white kids, but an issue of access and opportunity for qualified
minorities. Diversity is first about fairness. If we make it about
diversity as educational enhancement, we are missing the point and just
perpetuating the entitlement of white students.

Jedidah Isler, New York Times, December
17, 2015 writes:

“Black students’ responsibility in the
classroom is not to serve as ‘seasoning’ to the academic soup. They do not
function primarily to enrich the learning experience of white students. Black
students come to the physics classroom for the same reason white students do;
they love physics and want to know more. Do we require that white students
justify their presence in the classroom? Do we need them to bring something
other than their interest?”

In 36 years of teaching I never thought
of my black or Latino students as providing some service to the Caucasian
ones.I figured they were there to
learn, and for the most point thankful for the opportunity, like the white students (there are always the non-motivated or
just plain scared and “in-over-their-heads” students in all ethnicities.)Yes, as a secondary benefit they did help an
appreciation of diversity, especially since I require lots of
collaboration.But the white kids
provide diversity to the black and Latino ones, too, by forced collaborative
assignments, because we all tend to group with those who look like us (sorry,
it’s just the truth--not to judge, it's just what we do).

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Addendum: I revisited this post on July 28, 2016, edited it, appalled by the number of typos.

Sometimes I wonder if having an academic career is
detrimental to being a Spirit-led disciple of Jesus Christ.I present, as an academic would (especially
one who was a debate coach for several years), the arguments.

1.In a career in academia, we must be merit
mongers.In order to achieve tenure and
promotion, the only two big monetary awards outside of the move to
administration, or to be eligible for grants and awards, one’s accomplishments
in all things teaching, service, research, and professional development must be
documented, recorded, and broadcast.Volunteerism for the institution is not valuable for it own sake, but
for expanding the CV, or at least, one starts to feel that way.One begins to question one’s motives.Of course, one could leave things off the CV,
but . . . their absence may mean the difference in a promotion or award.

2.Academics teach, which usually involves some
level of lecturing and talking; therefore, we talk a lot, even the
introverts.Of course, 21st
century pedagogy warns against lecture as the primary method of teaching, but
most of us have not eschewed lecture totally if at all.Silence is not golden in this paradigm, but
listening can’t happen when one is talking.

3.We are experts; we know a lot, more than
others.Knowledge puffs up.So we can become prideful; we define critical
thinking idiosyncratically and egotistically and therefore are capable of
rejecting ideas out of hand.It goes like this, "Someone who
disagrees with us cannot possibly have been a critical thinker about the issue, because I am a critical thinker and I am right."

4.Knowing can get in the way of caring. Does
academia attract emotionally stunted people or make them that way?

5.We can become very annoyed by conventional
wisdom or misconceptions that fly in the face of what we know to be true of our
discipline, and that can come across as impatience and lack of concern.

6.We live in a world of text, ideas, and
data.We spend time away from people
while engaged with these things.

7.Depending on our disciplinary training, we see
and do not see certain parts of the whole picture.For example, I study politics and social
trends and am more conscious of the trends than the individuals.But as a Christian I cannot minister to
social trends, only to individuals, one at a time.I saw this in a recent reflective string on
single mothers (see below).

8.We can become very stressed over incredibly
insignificant things; we can convince ourselves we are doing what is best for
students when it is really just best for ourselves; we can believe we are
protecting our discipline when we are excluding learners.

On the other hand . . . How can academia help?:

1.We should be slow to pass judgment, having been
trained in data collection and the knowledge that there is always more data and
evidence to be gathered.

2.In light of the exponential growth of knowledge,
we should doubt our own opinions and hold them lightly rather than graspingly.

3.We should see God in the details.

4.We should be able to read Scripture deeply,
fully, informedly, and contextually.

5.If we are social scientists, or natural
scientists, or textual critics, we should be able to bring our unique
perspective to the discussion, but humbly.

6.We should get out of our nests of colleagues and
be friends with all kinds of people, even if they initially bore us.We should listen to others and realize that,
as hard as we worked to earn the doctorate, God’s world is wide.We should appreciate different points of
view.

7.Rejection
is part of the discipleship life.We
work hard to be accepted as part of this community called the academy, which
might make us compromise.Compromise for
the sake of being accepted is not an option.

In terms of reflection as a learning tool, I did this
recently about single mothers.I was
getting annoyed by the “I am a single mother” routine that students use, as if
it were the instructor’s fault or as if it meant they should get special
treatment.I realized how judgmental I
was being, judging them for immorality, for doing something I didn’t, for using
it as an excuse, for not putting their children first in going to school, and
for symbolizing a societal problem.All
of these are off-base; some are divorced and dumped by husbands and some regret
their pasts; but for the grace of God go most of us; well, maybe they do act
like martyrs but some of that is from fear; they are trying to create a better
world for their children (although a good father would probably help more); and they
are individuals, not social problems.Being an academic should make me have a big picture view and thus more understanding.

1.Higher education should be responsive to the
free market and the needs of potential students to be economically upwardly
mobile, and as such continue its slow evolution toward this goal, one it has
either intentionally or unintentionally been pursuing for quite some time.This means greater access, emphasis on return
on investment, innovation to cut costs through alternative delivery systems.

2.Higher education should keep its traditional
goals of educating the capable young people for leadership through an emphasis
on the traditional liberal arts and sciences but update approaches to these
subjects; higher education should cast a wary eye toward too many calls for
short-term adaptation just to deal with any short-term problems in higher
education we seem to have.A long-term
view (backward and forward) will provide the best foundation for educating
those who will approach societal problems.

#1 is what I have been most exposed to in recent conferences
about reimagining college because of (a) rising costs, (b) questions about the
monetary value of college, and (c) pressure from governments, accreditors, new
learning methodologies and technologies, and the business world.I recognize the value in it but find it
short-sighted.

#2 is what I read in Chancellor Dirks’ essay, or at least my
interpretation of it. As someone in the liberal arts, I lean toward this one,
except it doesn’t seem to take into account economic realities of the huge
sector of the population who want to pursue higher education to improve
themselves economically and socially.He
at least gives space to the idea that faith, religion, and spirituality have
“skin in the game” here.

(In the ‘70s, when cults were becoming more prevalent at
least in the public perception, someone said that the appeal of these groups
was partly due to the failure of parents to raise their children with strong
spiritual foundations of their own, ones based in the long-held traditions of
their faith.There is also the view that
the rise of “fundamentalism” of the radical kind may be due to
secularization.Elites can dismiss faith-based
institutions, but to me that only shows their own egocentric arrogance, as seen
in the last view).

#3 is essentially leftist utopianism.The mandate to higher education is to
redefine the curriculum so that students will be ready to address social
problems—and I think this is important—in a way that we elites say they should
be addressed.In this case, then, any
talk of critical thinking and creative problem-solving is moot, because the
goal is to achieve that vision of government or state-run healthcare,
education, and economic efforts, but not to find another vision.

Needless to say, I found the Bennington President’s message
abstract, somewhat incomprehensible, and to the extent I did grasp it,
untenable.Lots of commenters on the Ted
Talk posted how overcome with emotion they were by the talk, which got me to
thinking about my own propensity to be impressed with something an intellectual
says before truly digging through it.

Perhaps the value of higher education is its institutional
diversity, even if that is largely stratified into the Carnegie classification
system.Bryan College is accredited by
the same organization that accredits the University of Georgia, but they have
little in common in any way, except that they are “post secondary,” “higher
education” and as such the students can get Pell Grants and loans to study at
both.